Design­ing and devel­op­ing the city of the future needs a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tion. By now this chal­lenge no longer can be applied only to archi­tects or urban plan­ners. The grow­ing world pop­u­la­tion implies to rethink cities from scratch. The agri­cul­tur­al area which sup­plies the city with food actu­al­ly expands ten-fold com­pared to the new­ly built up area.

Food sup­ply there­fore shifts in the cen­ter focus of the city of the future. This, though, can only be accom­plished if we keep a holis­tic and inte­gral view on the city of the future. Next to eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social com­po­nents the spa­tial inte­gra­tion of ver­ti­cal farms is influ­enced by plant phys­i­o­log­i­cal and infra­struc­tur­al require­ments. Dif­fer­ent exper­tis­es there­fore have to be considered.

Inten­sive food pro­duc­tion in the mid­dle of the city cre­ates poten­tials for the econ­o­my, for trade and the pub­lic life. Healthy organ­ic pro­duce will be sold on new­ly cre­at­ed mar­ket areas – next or in the ver­ti­cal farm. Region­al prod­ucts are avail­able all over the year. The ver­ti­cal farm there­for can be seen as a mag­net to relo­cate mar­ket- and trade spaces which direct­ly or indi­rect­ly are con­nect­ed to food pro­duc­tion and food dis­tri­b­u­tion with­in the city. The ver­ti­cal farm, in the visu­al field of the urban population,
embod­ies a closed pro­duc­tion chain from cul­ti­va­tion to distribution.

Food pro­duc­tion will become part of met­ro­pol­i­tan dai­ly life.

Ver­ti­cal farms already have been real­ized in numer­ous coun­tries all around the globe. Tech­nolo­gies there­fore are already in use, eco­nom­ic track records are speak­ing for themselves